Mother, daughter graduate together

KATIE TAMMEN / Daily News

Monday

Jun 17, 2013 at 12:01 AMJun 17, 2013 at 4:47 PM

NAVARRE — Jody Roby and Beth Griffiths have taken “like mother, like daughter” to a whole new level.

Not once but twice, the two women have chosen to follow one another’s career paths. The first time, Griffiths decided to get into property management like her mother. The second time, Roby decided to go back to school to pursue the same degree her daughter was seeking.

They both walked across a stage recently to accept their master of science degrees in psychology and counseling from Troy University. “It’s something Beth and I both have a passion for,” Roby said.

Beth was the first to settle on pursuing a master’s degree in the psychology field.

“(Property management) was just kind of like a job; I was never happy doing it,” she said. “I knew it was what I knew, but I knew it wasn’t what I loved.”

After going back to pursue her bachelor’s degree, Beth decided to try out a variety of classes to see if anything grabbed her.

“It was kind of like trying on shoes in a way,” the mother of two said with a laugh.

Counseling turned out to be just the career she was looking for, and before too long she was pursuing her master’s in a two-year program so she could get licensed to practice.

As the then-Navarre resident worked through her first year, she frequently came home to talk to her mom about what she was learning.

But rather than let a number hold her back, Roby decided to enroll in the one-year master’s degree program. They took no classes together — Griffiths had already completed all the ones her mother needed — but they did spend a year going through the process together.

Both said they relied heavily on their respective spouses for help getting them through it.

As to the future, the two women are taking slightly different paths. Roby remains in Navarre and works at Okaloosa Academy as a therapist while Griffiths just moved to Atlanta and hopes to get a job working as a counselor there before starting her own practice a few years down the road.

“She has a passion for helping people,” Roby said of her daughter. “She’s going to be very good at it.”